


Shatter: Prelude

by lanapanda



Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, Science Boyfriends, Tesseract Project
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-22
Updated: 2012-11-22
Packaged: 2017-11-19 06:21:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/570159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanapanda/pseuds/lanapanda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set it the interim space between Shwarma and the departure of the Asgardians. Tony has a guest at the Tower. Two guests, actually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shatter: Prelude

On the bad days, everything tasted like carbonized shrapnel, blood, and sand. Tony got around those days by not eating. And if the all-liquid diet meant that he was drunk out of his mind when the flashbacks started coming a day or two after that when all he could smell was burning flesh, sweat and desert sun… well, at least it meant he didn’t have to deal with it sober.

  
Because the flashbacks came, whether he drank or not. Whether he ate or not. Whether he buried himself in work, or women, or tried to sleep (ha!) through it — it was all the same. The world around him exploded in fire, metal and burning flesh covered in sand and grit. He had escaped the cave, but it had followed him and carved itself into his subconscious thoughts inexorably, making itself at home.   
  
When he came to, invariably there would be a mess to clean up. Glass. Broken equipment. Sometimes a little repair work on himself to undo the damage he’d done while trying to pull the reactor coupling out, convinced it was shrapnel. That he was dying again.   
  
Every fight was a potential trigger, but Tony had thought he was going to be alright this time. The shwarma had been just fine, but now that he was back at the Tower, that familiar taste was creeping up the back of his throat with every breath he took. Metal. Blood. Grit.  
  
“I’m sorry, could you repeat that? I didn’t hear you over the flaming wall of disbelief that you would actually call to make demands right now,” Tony said as he toweled off his hair. The shower was step one in trying to postpone the inevitable. He had worked out a system. Shower, glass of whiskey. Lab work. A cuba libre chaser. No sleeping for more than 2 hours at a time, max. Rinse and repeat. He figured that he only needed to hold it back for two, three days tops, just while Banner was staying with him.   
  
Just a couple of days, and then the planets would be aligned or some bullshit, and Thor could take his crazy little brother home for timeout or spankings or whatever Asgardians did when one of the royals went on a world-destroying bender. No chariot races for a millennia, maybe.  
  
Tony doubted that Bruce would want to stick around past that, even with the R&D invitation and the fact that Manhattan couldn’t get  _that_  much more destroyed right now. So all Tony had to do to keep up appearances was hold out for a few days and then it would be fine.   
  
But Fury was fucking up the rotation, as usual.   
  
“All I asked is that you and Doctor Banner take a look at the tesseract while it’s in your possession. See if you come up with any insights we missed,” Fury tried to make it sound reasonable. The Council wasn’t going to be pleased that the tesseract project was dead, but he didn’t give a fuck about that. What Fury did care about was the research itself. If Stark hadn’t gotten out of the weapons business… but he had, and this was what was left.   
  
“Riiiight. You know, it’s actually outside consulting hours at the moment, and while I could accept this kind of wild disregard in procedure from Phil, from you it just doesn’t fill me with the same sort of whimsical exasperation,” Tony caught the edge of the towel he was wearing around his waist, took it off, and tossed it over the phone where it was lying on his bed. “End call.”   
  
He waited for a moment to see if Fury would call back. He didn’t. To Tony, that indicated that he was serious about the request, but also that he knew Tony had reached the peak of Bullshit Mountain and wasn’t open to negotiation.   
  
Still, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, wasn’t it? To take a peek at this energy source that had driven men mad in their attempts to claim it and use it. That had defied mankind’s best attempts thus far to wield it… Soon it would be in some dusty Asgardian vault anyway (presumably), so it wouldn’t matter what Tony found out. But the knowing itself, that was the thing.  
  
“Sonofabitch. I guess you talked me into it after all,” Tony said with a smirk in the general direction of the phone. He pulled on a pair of boxers, a pair of jeans, and a white t-shirt with the words ‘God Loves Me Best’ emblazoned in red on the front. Time to get to work.


End file.
